Glass House
by ArentYouSophiaLoren-8887
Summary: The night Katie pulls Drew from the fighting ring, she and Adam have a talk about his brother and form a new friendship.


**Author's Note: I started writing this forever ago (like right after Mr. Brightside Part 2 aired forever ago…yeah, this is THAT ancient) but I never got the chance to finish it, and now that I'm in school and bogged down with classes, my schedule permits even less time for writing. But I found this in the bowels of my computer's Documents folder recently and decided to finish it off. **

**Takes place right after Katie pulls Drew out of the cage fight.**

**Reminder that I am on Twitter: AlbatrossTam14 (protected tweets)**

**Thanks to anyone who reads and reviews. Support is always, always appreciated.**

**I don't own Degrassi.**

**I.**

It was raining by the time she brought him home, a hard, fast rain that pounded relentlessly on the roof of Julian's car like

_(bullets)_

a symphony, a rising, orchestral swell.

"Where to?" Julian asked.

Drew was still staring out the window of the car.

Julian peered at Katie and Drew in his rearview.

"Drew!" he called. "Where am I goin', man?"

When he didn't answer, Katie reached over and gently touched his shoulder. He shuddered a bit under her touch, but didn't try to pull away.

"Make a left up here," he whispered in a voice that sounded like a rugburn. "Turn left at the stop sign. Then make your first right."

"I can't hear you, dude," Julian replied.

"Make a left up here," Katie repeated. "Then left at the stop sign, and first right."

They came to a stop at the end of a cul-da-sac, in front of a small white house with a wrought iron mailbox and black window shutters that were narrowed like a suspicious gaze.

"This your place?" Julian asked.

Katie looked at Drew, who jerked his head in some semblance of a nod. He was staring out the window, his eyes no clearer than the rain-battered glass, streaked with storm.

Julian unlocked the car doors. Katie took Drew's hand, still raw and slick with drying blood, and together, they climbed out of the backseat and into the onslaught.

"Take care, man," Julian said, or at least, that's what Katie thought he said before he rolled the windows up and drove away, throwing his hand up in the universal guy code symbol for "catch you later".

The rain was wild and freezing; grabbing Drew's hand tighter, Katie pulled him to the front door, where they took shelter under an awning.

"Do you have a key?" she asked him.

He stared at her blankly for a moment, as if he had no idea who she was, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small gold key. She took it from his sticky fingers, trying to ignore the warm, wet blood his hands had smeared on the dirty metal.

The house was dark and cold, all the lights turned off and the shades drawn on the windows. Katie flipped on the kitchen light, then turned it off again when she heard Drew hiss through his teeth at the overbright lights.

"Where's your room?" she whispered to him. He was staggering against her, causing her knees to shake under the weight of holding him up, and she wanted him to lie down before he fell apart completely. Or she buckled and took both of them down with her.

He pointed vaguely to a staircase at the end of the hall. Katie tugged him along down the steps, past a big screen TV with an entertainment system and microsuede couches to a small blue bedroom off to the left.

Drew collapsed on the bed as soon as she led him to the edge. Lying on his stomach, his head buried in his arms, Katie could get a good look at his skin in the lamplight. It was covered in bruises in various states of healing, some black and fresh and others turning yellow with age. The smeared watercolor of his back looked so much worse in the bare light of his bedroom than in the dimness of Julian's car driving through the dark city streets, and she couldn't help gasping a little, putting a hand over her mouth as soon as the sound escaped, as if she could draw it back.

Drew lifted his face out of his arms for a moment to look at her. Drenched in sweat and rainwater, his clothes and hair clinging to him as he shivered, he looked like something newly hatched.

"Stay with me." His voice was barely there.

Katie hesitated a moment. She was alone in the house of a boy she barely knew and understood even less; any moment how, his parents could come home and demand an explanation for the sorry state of their broken, bloody mess of a son. She had no idea what she could possibly do for him now.

But Katie looked at him, those lost, empty well eyes, and knew she couldn't leave. She slipped out of her sneakers and peeled off her jacket, slipping onto the dark blue comforter next to him, hoping her movements came off as confident instead of confused. She pressed her face into the back of Drew's neck, a dark curve like the shape of the moon, and wrapped her arms around his stomach. She closed her eyes as she felt him breathe into her hands, her heart beating into his back, and saw cages, hands, falling. She brought him back to her once, and she didn't want to leave him until she'd done it again.

The longer she stayed still, feeling him drop farther into sleep, it occurred to her less and less to think of this as weird. She'd never done anything like this with any guy before, and Drew wasn't at all the type she should even be interested in. There was no reason for them to connect.

But for some reason, none of it mattered. Not now. He just needed her.

Total silence fell on them, bottomless but not uncomfortable in the little room. Between the darkness and the quiet, the rain falling down and the sound of breathing surrounding the both of them, she curled around him like an embryo. She still felt the adrenaline rush from the afternoon's events coursing through her. Her stomach was still cramped in knots, her hands still shaking slightly from watching Drew turn into a tornado, pummeling that kid into a stain on the pavement. Katie forced herself to take calm, steady breaths and relax. She continued to run her fingers through Drew's sweaty hair, raking her untrimmed nails gently across his scalp, and felt the tension slowly drain away from him as he became pliant and gentle under her fingertips.

Outside, the dark cold of the shadowy spring night was finally settling in. Katie glanced through drooping eyes at the tiny window of Drew's bedroom, and saw that the rain had turned to snow. The trees dotted the street like sentinels, the wet, heavy snowdrifts settling and silently burying them under a mute white world. The snow made sky, wind, and earth indistinguishable, as if the world had been turned upside down. The late hour, the darkness, the trees, and the snow all combined to create a weird, otherworldly aura. The world felt transitory, shifting between the real and the unreal, the snow like little bits of that divisive veil slowly disintegrating and falling to the ground. It blurred the line between present and eternity, worldly and nether, known and unknowable. "Real" became a concept as slippery as the shimmering glass streets outside.

Her hand brushed his cheek. The skin was still wet. Whether it was from old sweat or new tears, she couldn't tell, but if he was crying, he didn't seem aware of it. She rested her head down on the pillow and murmured to him something half-hum, half-ocean. The windy croon echoed along the cavernous bedroom walls. Shadows twisted and swerved along the shadows like candle flames, like fleeting prayers. Their room became an ice cathedral – silent, hollow, dark, and heavy.

They were lost in the anonymity of darkness, slipping in and out of the world of the aware.

**II.**

Adam nearly slipped and busted his butt on the ground trying to unlock the backdoor to his house. Cursing the sudden April snowstorm and the ice and doors that had to be locked in expensive neighborhoods that didn't need locks on doors in the first place and the entire landmass that was Canada while he was at it, he finally dug his spare key out of the bottom of his backpack and unlocked the door, slipping into the warm cave of the bonus room and sighing as his frigid fingers pulsed in relief. Hot cocoa. That would get his blood flowing again.

As he headed towards the stairs, he heard a noise from Drew's bedroom. He didn't know his brother was home; he thought Drew had the newspaper thing until late tonight. Adam tiptoed to his brother's bedroom, creaking the door open lightly.

It took him a minute to process what he was seeing. Katie Matlin, THE Katie Matlin, lying in bed beside his shirtless, bruised, sleeping brother. Katie was awake, propped up on one elbow, stroking his brother's arm in a way that made Adam's own skin shiver from the gentleness of the touch. He was torn from wanting to back out of the scene slowly, feeling as if he was spying on something too intimate to be seen by outside eyes, and wanting to know exactly what was going on.

Before he could figure out what to do, Katie saw him in the hooded darkness. Her face turned pink, but she didn't look particularly embarrassed at getting caught in bed with Drew, even if she was still wearing her uniform pants and a long-sleeved shirt. She sat up, shrugging, and slipped off the bed, trying not to creak the mattress and wake Drew.

Drew didn't stir at all from the groan and squeak of the mattress springs. He lay flat on his belly, sleeping still as the dead. Adam watched as Katie bent her head down to the crevice where his brother had buried his head in his arms. Whether she was kissing his cheek or just making sure he was out before she left him, Adam couldn't tell, but Katie crept away from the bedside, pulling her discarded jacket back on as she followed Adam out of the room and shut the door behind her.

"So," Adam began, keeping his voice light, "I see you and my brother have made time for extracurriculars."

"It's not like that," Katie whispered. "We were sleeping."

"I can see that," Adam replied drily.

"Not that kind of sleep," Katie argued. "We really were just sleeping. That's all."

"Okay," Adam said. "I get it. I believe you."

He looked at his brother's closed door, then back at Katie.

"Are you guys," he asked, dropping his voice, "you know, like, having a thing or something?"

Katie shrugged.

"I have no idea," she said. "But things got a little intense today."

Adam stomach dropped. His basket case brother had officially gone off the deep end.

"How intense?" he asked, not wanting to know the answer.

Katie pulled her jacket around her, hugging herself together.

"Intense like nuclear," she said. "But it's okay now."

Adam raised his eyebrows.

"You sure?" he asked. "Cause his track record these days isn't looking too good."

_Like__screaming__himself__awake__every__night__and__slamming__people__into__lockers__for__brushing__up__against__him__in__the__hallways__and__jumping__every__time__the__phone__rings._

He didn't want to think about what Katie had seen Drew do. He'd seen enough of it himself.

"Well, for now, anyways," Katie replied. "He's asleep. Has been for a while."

"I think that's the longest he's been asleep in, like, two months," he told her. "He…he told you what happened? Everything?"

"Yeah," Katie nodded.

Adam peered back at the closed door.

"I don't know what to do," he confessed. "I hate not knowing how to help. I'm scared something bad's gonna happen with him." He paused. "Then I guess, something just did."

"Well," Katie said, "for now, it looks like you can give it a rest."

"I guess," he repeated, still staring at the closed bedroom door.

"So", Katie said, breaking the silence, "should I shimmy out the bathroom window, or sneak out the back door?"

Adam had to grin. "I'll walk you out", he offered.

Katie followed him upstairs. When they reached front door, Adam suddenly turned around to face her.

"Thank you," he said.

He wanted to convey the real meaning of the words, say everything that was hiding behind the curtain of the simple phrase that when used for something more than a perfunctory gesture of give and take, often loses its meaning in translation. He didn't know if he could explain to Katie in any type of words how much he really did thank her, or if Katie would even understand if he tried.

In truth, he wasn't even sure _what_ he was thanking Katie for. Breaking Drew away from whatever it is he'd gotten mixed up in? Bringing him home? Staying with him until he'd fallen asleep, sure he was safe for the first time in months? For being the only person who he'd responded to since Spring Break? Breaking down that barrier that even Adam – who had always, always, always been that person – could not break through?

He had no idea.

As a result, an uncomfortable silence hung in the air between them, static with the jumbled, tangled thoughts he couldn't and didn't even think he could try to explain.

Fortunately, Katie seemed just as uncomfortable with their wordy silence as Adam did, because she just smiled awkwardly, her head bobbing like a puppet.

"No problem," she replied.


End file.
